William Le Queux (continued 4)

A silence fell between the two men. Borselli was reflecting upon a certain agreement at which they had arrived when in London.

“I really can’t understand you, Jules,” he exclaimed at last. “You have rendered us the most valuable assistance until the present moment, and now, when all is prepared, you suddenly withdraw and make mysterious hints that our efforts may result in serious consequences. What do you mean?”

“I mean that the revelations are premature.”

“But tell me the truth, once and for all. Are you still on our side, or has the girl’s beauty appealed to you, and you now intend to save her father? I know what a soft, impressionable heart you have—like all your race.”

“I am still united with you,” the Frenchman declared quickly. “It is because of that I give you warning.” Borselli’s dark eyes were fixed upon the other’s with a look of quick shrewdness. He was a man whose mind, when once made up, was not easily turned from its purpose.

“And your warning I shall certainly not heed,” he said slowly. “You know my intentions, and I shall carry them out to-day to the letter.”

“You shall not?” the other exclaimed defiantly.

“Oh! and who will prevent it?” asked the Under-Secretary.

“I will. You shall not seek your own ruin blindly like this!”

Dubard very cleverly endeavoured to convince his companion of his own interest in the conspiracy against Morini, while Borselli, of course, had no knowledge of his compact with Mary. Nevertheless, he saw plainly that the Frenchman’s sudden withdrawal from the affair was due to some hidden motive, and he refused to be turned from his object. To him the overthrow of Morini meant wealth and power, and he had no intention of relinquishing his efforts just at the moment when the reins of office were within his grasp. All was prepared. The revelations were to be made, and charges of misappropriation and treason hurled at the unfortunate Minister; charges which would, on the morrow, be taken up by the subsidised Press and exaggerated and distorted into a public scandal which no statesman, however popular, could withstand. The plot had cost him three years of clever scheming, during which time he had acted as Morini’s humble underling, expressing profound thanks for any small benefits, but secretly hating and despising him, and yet always seeking to worm himself further into his confidence. And Dubard wished him to abandon it all at the very hour when success was assured! No. He flatly refused. And he told his companion so in plain, forcible language.

The other, however, merely shrugged his narrow shoulders and was silent, allowing the Under-Secretary to upbraid him without offering a word in self-defence. Then, when Borselli paused to gain breath, he said—

“I merely repeat what I have said—the question must not be put.”

“I say it shall be put?” cried the other fiercely.

Dubard was silent again and quite cool, only the slight flush upon his high cheeks told that a fierce anger consumed him.

“If it is put, it will be at your own risk,” he exclaimed at last, placing his forefinger on the table to emphasise his words. “Remember there are many who would gloat over the downfall of Angelo Borselli.”

“And there are more who would like to see me Minister of War.”

“You will never obtain office if you carry out the scheme you have arranged,” Dubard declared. “I think up to the present I have shown myself your friend, for without me you surely could not have done what you have. You have many times admitted that. Why, therefore, do you not take my advice?”

“Because, my dear Jules, you have suddenly turned round and are now championing Morini.”

“No, you mistake me. I am merely warning you in our mutual interests. Morini will retaliate—and if he does—!” And again he shrugged his shoulders significantly.

“Well, and if he does? What can he do?”

“He can make some ugly revelations, you know.”

“I have no fear of anything he may allege,” laughed the other. “He cannot establish his innocence.”

“Then you will not listen to reason and postpone the public sensation you have arranged for this afternoon?”

“No,” replied Angelo. “I will not.”

“Then, if you intend to imperil both of us by acting so injudiciously, I, for one, do not intend to suffer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply this. If you are determined not to interfere, and to allow the question to be put and the stream of allegations to pour forth from the Socialists, I shall, in order to save myself, place myself on the side of Morini.”

“Of course, my dear Jules. You are always on the side which pays you best,” sneered the other.

“And in your company,” remarked the Frenchman quite coolly, adding in a firm voice, “I wish you to give me a line to Montebruno now, this moment, and I will take it to him in the Camera—a word to him to postpone the question.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort. I do not intend to sacrifice my future because of your sentimentalities. You are defending Morini.”

“Yes,” he cried. “I will defend him! I tell you again, and very clearly, that if Montebruno speaks in the Camera to-day you will be relieved of office.”

“Oh, how’s that?”

“I am speaking plainly,” Dubard said, with knit brows.

“Time does not admit of more words, otherwise Montebruno will rise and put the question. I therefore tell you that if you do not give me the letter I require at once, I shall make a clean breast of the whole affair.” And he glanced at his watch as he spoke.

“You!” gasped Borselli quickly, staring at the speaker. “Ah yes! I was a fool to have trusted you after all. I recognised it when too late. You have turned in Morini’s favour.”

“I have my own interests to serve as well as yours,” Dubard remarked quite frankly. “It is to my interest that the question is postponed.”

“And it is to mine that it should be put.”

“But you will not allow Montebruno to proceed, and risk your own position. Remember that in this affair my interests at the moment are not the same as yours.”

“And you actually declare that you will tell the truth if Montebruno speaks?” said Borselli hoarsely, realising how completely the man before him held his future in his hands.

“I do,” was the response. “You surely know me well enough! In such moments as these I do not trifle. Give me the letter! It is already a quarter to five, and I have only just time to drive to the Camera and place it in Montebruno’s hand.”

“But I can’t understand your motive,” exclaimed Borselli, realising that his companion meant what he said. “Remember what we agreed that night in London.”

“Perfectly. While our interests are similar, I am your friend; but where they divide, I am friend of myself alone. Come, Angelo, we cannot afford to waste further words—the letter, just two lines, or exposure of the truth. The latter would, I think,” he laughed, “be even a greater sensation to the public than the allegations against the Minister.”

Chapter Twenty Four.

In the Chamber of Deputies.

The man who had laid such an elaborate plot against His Excellency stood hesitating and confounded. He had never dreamed that Dubard, upon whom he had relied so implicitly, would be seized with this sudden caprice to defend Morini. Mary might have persuaded him to adopt this course, he reflected, yet he knew Jules too well as a man in whose heart there did not exist a single spark of either respect or true affection for the opposite sex.

“Come,” exclaimed the elegant Frenchman, with a look of determination on his pallid countenance. “Write the note quickly, or it will be too late. Recollect, if Montebruno speaks, I shall tell the truth.”

“And betray me?”

“Of necessity.”

Then Angelo Borselli, seeing that all his elaborate preparations for a coup were checkmated by the very man who had rendered him such valuable help, threw himself into a chair, and muttering some hard words, scribbled three lines to the man, his puppet, who was to hurl those terrible charges against the Minister of War.

“Good,” exclaimed Dubard airily, as he took the letter and thrust it into his pocket. “You have done well to save your own reputation, my dear Angelo. It would not be wise for the public to know everything, would it? Excuse me running away so quickly, but I have only just time to drive down to the Camera.” And snatching up his hat he rushed out, leaving the Under-Secretary standing in the centre of the room, silent in disappointment and chagrin.

Meanwhile, in the Chamber the excitement among the Socialist group had gradually increased as the hands of the big clock moved on towards the hour of five. They watched Montebruno seated in his place armed with many formidable documents, and saw how he was preparing himself for one of those oratorical efforts for which he was so famous. He was a thin, black-bearded man with small dark eyes and aquiline features—a man who had made the law a stepping-stone to politics like so many of his confrères. Time after time he fidgeted, changed his position, stroked his beard thoughtfully, and re-examined his papers, every action being watched anxiously by his party, among whom it was whispered that he was to put some sensational question—but of what character was to them a mystery.

The hand of the big clock pointed to the hour of five, and the Chamber was occupied with other business. Vito Ricci, sitting in his place almost opposite Montebruno in the great horseshoe chamber, waited breathlessly, well knowing that the words which would fall from his lips would seal the doom of that man waiting so patiently in his library in the far-off Apennines.

The tension of those moments of expectancy was terrible.

The clock marked five, ten, fifteen minutes past the hour, when, of a sudden, the voluble Socialist rose, and began by expressing regret at being compelled to take up the time of the Chamber upon a most important and very pressing matter. He had just arrived at that point, holding the whole Camera in attention by his clever oratory, when a prominent member of his own party pulled his coat-tails and handed him a letter. This he tore open mechanically while still speaking, but on glancing at the contents, he hesitated and stopped short in utter confusion.

“Go on! Go on!” urged his party wildly, eager to hear what allegations he was about to make against the Government.

But regaining his self-possession in a moment, he turned to them, and with a smile said—

“Gentlemen, I have just learned, and very fortunately perhaps, that I have been somewhat misinformed regarding certain matters to which I intended directing the attention of the Camera, and therefore I will no longer occupy your time.”

And he sat down abruptly, whereat those in opposition jeered at him, and even the Socialists themselves rose and went out in disgust, disappointed at relinquishing what was promised to be a staggering blow against the Government. With them went Vito Ricci, who, ten minutes later, was in the Ministry of War describing the curious scene to Camillo Morini over the telephone.

The words he spoke put fresh life and hope into the despairing Minister. He breathed again when he heard how he had been saved almost by a miracle. Then he walked to his table, and the letters he had written he carried to the fireplace and there lit them with a wax vesta and watched them consume—all save the order for Solaro’s release and reinstatement.

He held the latter in his hand for a long time thinking deeply. But at last the temptation grew too strong within him, for slowly, and with seeming reluctance, he opened it, applied a match, destroying it as he had done the others, and as he watched it burn to black tinder he murmured to himself—

“No! I dare not release him. If I did they might suspect—suspect. And yet Mary declares that he is innocent! What, I wonder, can she know?”

New life had been created within him, new hope, new aspirations. A moment before he had looked upon that tiny tube with its fatal tabloids as the only means by which he could escape his enemies, but now he laughed to himself as he placed it in a drawer of the writing-table—laughed at his own cowardice.

He never dreamed that he had been saved by Mary’s self-sacrifice. The incident, as related by Ricci over the telephone, was curious and mysterious. The letter handed to the man who had risen to denounce him had evidently contained something which prevented him making the charges, but what it was he could not imagine.

To him the whole affair was a complete mystery, which he left to Vito Ricci to unravel and report.

When his wife and the girls returned, they found him idling on the terrace beneath the pretty arbour from which spread that glorious view of the Arno valley up to Florence. He was a changed man from an hour before—that hour when he had come face to face with ruin and death. By the mysterious turn which events had taken a new life had suddenly opened to him. The blow they intended to aim at him had apparently been abandoned, even though all preparations had been made. The reason was an utter enigma.

He laughed merrily with Mary and the English girls as they came along the terrace where he was sitting idly smoking a cigar, inquiring where they had been and how they had found the lady they had visited.

All three began to chatter, as was their wont, while Her Excellency, fatigued after the drive, entered the house to rest before dinner. She, however, did not fail to notice her husband’s unusual good-humour, for of late he had been thoughtful and depressed, silent and moody when in her presence, and apparently full of serious state affairs.

The instant Mary saw her father’s countenance she read the truth. She had left the villa well knowing—through Dubard, who had sent her word in secret—that the blow was to be dealt that afternoon. She knew all that her father was suffering, and she feared the worst, even though she had made that compact with the man she suspected and despised. She had dreaded to return lest some hideous tragedy should have occurred, and all the time she was absent she had reproached herself that she had not remained at his side to support and encourage him in face of the threatened peril.

But the danger was over. He had no doubt received word over the telephone, for he was his own old self again, and began chaffing Violet Walters, the blue-eyed daughter of the London barrister, regarding a young lieutenant of the bersaglieri, an aristocrat of Florence, who had dined with them on the previous evening, and towards whom she had been very much attracted.

“It is really too bad!” declared the English girl, blushing to her eyes. “You declare that I’m in love with every good-looking man, and I’m sure I’m not.”

“We Italians always find English girls very charming,” His Excellency said, smiling. “That is why I married an Englishwoman myself,” whereat the two Fry girls, pale-faced and insipid, tittered to themselves.

“Really it was most disgraceful of Violet to flirt with young Capponi as she did last night!” exclaimed Mary mischievously, upholding her father’s view.

“I did not!” protested the barrister’s daughter. “You know I didn’t, Mary!”

“He’ll be proposing next Monday when he comes again to dinner, and you’ll be the Marchesa Capponi,” Mary said, spreading out her skirts and bowing with mock obeisance.

Her father, full of good-humour now that the terror of those anxious hours had passed, rose, and placing his hand kindly on Violet’s shoulder, assured her that his words were not meant to be taken seriously; for he saw the girl’s indignation was rising, and that she resented being accused of flirtation before the two daughters of the Genoese merchant.

They all gossiped together for some time, until presently Mary went forth, as usual, to accompany her father on his evening stroll through the pine woods.

When alone, His Excellency was the first to speak, explaining to her all that Vito Ricci had related over the telephone.

“Then the crisis is prevented,” she remarked, in a strange, mechanical voice, he thought. He had expected her to betray surprise and joy, but, on the contrary, she received the information of his escape with an inertness which surprised him. “It must have been the letter handed to the Socialist deputy,” she added.

“Without doubt,” he remarked. “But how annoyed and disappointed Angelo must be at the failure of his scheme just at the very moment when his triumph was assured.”

“I expect so,” his daughter said, walking slowly at his side, her eyes fixed upon the ground. Her father had been saved at the cost of her own happiness, her own life. But would that man adhere to his compact? she wondered. Was the crisis only postponed until after her marriage—until after she had given herself to him in exchange for her father’s life? She knew too well that he would never face exposure; she knew, alas! that, like many before him, he would rather take his own life than bear the brunt of those scurrilous and unscrupulous attacks. He had more than once told her so—not directly, of course, but in language that was unmistakable.

She had had no confidence in Dubard since the night when he had examined the safe in the library. He would, she felt assured, play her false. His ingenuity was unparalleled, and he was, moreover, a friend of her father’s bitterest enemy. Therefore, what had she to hope from him? The attack upon the Minister and his methods was only postponed in order to lure her and her father into a sense of security. What was to prevent the allegation being made after she had given herself to him in marriage? As she walked there in the evening light beneath the high dark pines she fully realised the insecurity of the position. In the end the man Borselli must triumph, and she, with her father, would be equally a victim.

What her father had told her of the incident in the Chamber that afternoon revealed the truth. Dubard had, by his clever scheming, succeeded in postponing the blow until after she had become his wife. She knew well his intimate friendship with Angelo Borselli, and felt assured that it was in the interests of the Under-Secretary that he had opened that safe which His Excellency had believed to be closed so effectively to everyone.

“You will seek to retaliate, will you not?” she asked her father suddenly. “You will surely not allow Borselli another opportunity of conspiring against you! He should be removed from office upon some pretext or other.”

Her father smiled at her words, and replied—

“It would be easy to retaliate, my dear, but it would be unwise.”

“Why? If he remains in office, he may to-morrow, or on some occasion when you least expect it, level a blow that might crush you?”

“I know! I know!” he groaned. “I am not safe by any means. Until Vito discovers what has really occurred I must remain patiently inactive.”

“But why not remove Borselli from office? You could surely do that! It is your duty to yourself to do so!”

“Ah! You do not know everything, Mary,” answered her father very gravely. “To attempt his dismissal at the present moment would be a most injudicious course. By making charges against him I should also implicate myself. If I spoke a single word to his detriment, it would be suicidal. I should be seeking my own downfall.”

“Then, to speak plainly, you are unable to dismiss him?” she said in a low, distinct voice, looking her father straight in the face with a glance of reproach. “You are entirely in that man’s hands?”

His Excellency, grave and thoughtful again, nodded in the affirmative, sighed heavily, and then admitted—

“You know the truth, my dear. My secrets are, unfortunately, his?”

And she echoed his sigh with her white lips compressed. She foresaw, alas! that for her there was no hope of escape from that hideous compact she had been compelled to make. She had given herself as the price of her father’s honour, the price of his very life, to a man whom she could neither trust nor love—a man who, when it suited his own interests, would break his bond without the slightest compunction, and allow the crushing blow to fall upon her house—a blow that must be fatal to her beloved father, who stood there so grave and thoughtful at her side.

She contemplated the future, but saw in it only a grey, limitless sea of blank despair.

Chapter Twenty Five.

Billy Grenfell is Philosophic.

“Then we must break up the home, I suppose?”

“I suppose so, Billy, much as I regret it. But a fellow has to take advantage of the main chance in his life, you know, and this is mine?” declared George Macbean, leaning back in his padded chair at the breakfast-table in their high-up old room in Fig Tree Court, Temple.

“I should think so! An appointment in the Italian Ministry of War at such a salary isn’t an offer that comes to every man, and you’d be a fool if you didn’t accept it. You must have some high official friend whom you’ve never told me about—eh?” And William Grenfell, barrister-at-law, known as “Billy” to his intimates, with whom Macbean shared chambers, took up his friend’s letter and re-read it, asking, “What’s the signature? These foreigners sign their names in such an abominable manner that nobody can ever read them.”

“Angelo Borselli, the Under-Secretary. I met him in the summer, while I was staying with my uncle near Rugby.”

“And he offers you a billet like this? By Jove, you’re lucky!” And the big, burly, clean-shaven fellow of about thirty-five, one of the ever-increasing briefless brigade, rose and looked out across the quiet courtyard. “You’ll throw over that pompous ass Morgan-Mason, won’t you? I wonder how you stood the cad so long.”

“Necessity, my dear fellow. It has been writing letters for Morgan-Mason or starve—I preferred the former,” remarked Macbean, with a smile.

The old panelled sitting-room, with its well-filled bookcase, its pipe-rack, its threadbare carpet, and its greasy, leather-covered chairs, worn but comfortable, differed but little from any other chambers in that old-world colony of bachelors. Macbean and Grenfell had had diggings together and employed the same laundress for the past three years, the former spruce and smart, mixing with the West End world in which his employer moved, while the latter was a thorough-going Bohemian, eccentric in many ways, unsuccessful, yet nevertheless a man brimming over with cleverness. They had been fast friends ten years before, and when opportunity had offered to share chambers they had eagerly embraced it.

Billy never had a brief. He idled in the Courts with a dummy brief before him in order to impress the public, but his slender income was mostly derived from contributions to certain critical reviews, who took his “stuff” and paid him badly for it.

George Macbean, though he could so ill afford it, bore the major portion of the expenses of their small household, for he knew well the little reverses of fortune that had been Billy’s, and what a good, generous fellow he really was at heart.

Through those three years they had lived together no wry word had ever arisen between them, but this letter which Macbean had received caused them both to ponder.

Grenfell was a man of even temper and full of good-humour. He bubbled over with high spirits, even in the face of actual adversity, while over at the Courts he was recognised as a wit of no mean order. But thought of the breaking up of their little home and their separation filled him with deepest regret.

Macbean realised all that his friend felt, and said simply—

“I’m very sorry to go, Billy. You know that. But what can I do? I must escape my present soul-killing drudgery. You don’t know of half the insults I’ve had to swallow from Morgan-Mason because I happen to be the son of a gentleman.”

“I know, old chap; I know well. Of course you must accept this appointment,” said the other in a tone of quiet sadness. “I can shift for myself—or at least I hope so.”

“To leave you is the only regret I have in leaving England, Billy,” declared Macbean, taking his friend’s hand and grasping it firmly.

But the big fellow, with his eyes fixed before him across the square, remained sad and silent.

The letter had come to George as a complete surprise, reviving within his mind pleasant memories of Orton, of the Minister Morini who had lived incognito, of Borselli, and of Mary most of all. He would, if he accepted, meet them again, and become on friendly terms with the most powerful men in Italy. The offer seemed almost too good to be real. Had it been the first of April he would have suspected fooling. But he read the big official letter headed “Under-Secretary for War—Rome” offering him the appointment, and saw that no fraud had been attempted.

Both men filled their pipes mechanically, lit them from the same match, as was their habit, and smoked in silence. Both were too full of regret for mere words. They understood each other, and neither was surprised at the other’s heavy thought. Their friendship had been a very close and pleasant one, but in future their lives lay apart. Grenfell regarded it philosophically with a little smile, as was his wont whenever things went wrong with him, while Macbean pondered deeply as to what the future had in store for him.

Before his eyes rose a vision of a lithe and dainty figure in a white dress on the tennis-lawn at Orton, that woman who was so delightfully cosmopolitan, with the slight roll of the r’s when she spoke that betrayed her foreign birth—the woman whom rumour had engaged to the young French count upon whom the honest village folk looked with considerable suspicion.

“You’ll be glad to leave the service of that hog-merchant,” Billy remarked at last, for want of something better to say, “and I congratulate you upon your escape from him. What you’ve told me in the past is sufficient to show that he only regards you as a kind of superior valet. Had I been you I should have kicked the fellow long ago.”

“The pauper may not kick the millionaire, my dear old chap,” said Macbean, smiling,—“or at least, if he does he kicks against the pricks.”

“I can’t make out how some men get on,” remarked Grenfell between the whiffs of his huge pipe. “Why, it seems only the other day that Morgan-Mason had a shop in the Brompton Road, and used to make big splashes with advertisements in the cheap papers. I remember my people used to buy their butter there. An editor I know used to laugh over the puff paragraphs he sent out about himself. He’s made his money and become a great man all in ten years or so.”

“My dear Billy, money makes money,” remarked his friend, with a dry laugh. “Society worships wealth nowadays. Such men as Morgan-Mason have coarsened and cheapened the very entourage of Court and State. Let the moneyed creature be ever so vulgar, so illiterate, so vicious, it matters naught. Money-bags are the sole credentials necessary to gain admission to the most exclusive of houses, the House, even to Buckingham Palace itself. Men like Morgan-Mason smile at the poverty of the peerage, and with their wealth buy up heritage, title, and acceptance. The borrower is always servant to the lender, and hence our friend has many obsequious servants in what people call smart society.”

“And more’s the pity! Society must be rotten!” declared Billy emphatically. “I don’t know what we’re coming to nowadays. I should think that the post of secretary to such an arrant cad must be about the worst office a gentleman can hold. I’d rather earn half-crowns writing paragraphs for the evening papers myself.”

“Yes,” Macbean admitted, with a sigh, “I shall be very glad to leave his service. I only regret on your account.”

“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m a failure, dear boy, like lots of others!” Grenfell declared. “There are dozens in the Temple like myself, chronically hard up and without prospect of success. I congratulate you with all my heart upon your stroke of good fortune. You’ve waited long enough for your chance, and it has now come to you just when you least expected it. Death and fortune always come unexpectedly: to all of us the former, and to a few of us the latter. But,” he added, “this Italian politician—Bore-something—must have taken a violent fancy to you.”

“On the contrary, I only met him once or twice,” responded Macbean. “That’s what puzzles me. I don’t see what object he has in offering me the appointment.”

“I do. They want an English secretary who knows Italian well. You’ll just fill the post. Foreign Governments make no mistakes in the men they choose, depend upon it. They don’t put Jacks-in-office like we do. Didn’t you tell me once that you met the Italian Minister of War? Perhaps he had a hand in your appointment.”

“Possibly so,” Macbean admitted, recollecting that well-remembered day when he had greeted His Excellency on the lawn at Orton and the statesman had at once recognised him.

“Well, however it has been arranged, it is a jolly good lift for you, old man,” declared Billy, smoking vigorously. “You should take a leaf out of Morgan-Mason’s book, and use everyone, even the most vulgar of moneyed plutocrats and the most hide-bound of bureaucrats, for your own advantage. If you do, you’ll get on in the world. It’s the only way nowadays, depend upon it. New men, new methods. All the old traditions of life, all the dignity and delicacy and pride of birth, have gone by the board in these days of brainy smartness and pushful go. Life’s book to-day, old fellow, is full of disgraced and blotted leaves.”

George sighed. He was used to Billy’s plainly expressed philosophy. His criticisms were always full of a grim humour, and he was never tired of denouncing the degenerates of the present in comparison with bygone days. He was a Bohemian, and prided himself on that fact. He entertained a most supreme and withering contempt for modern place-hunters and for the many wind-bags in his own profession who got on because of their family influence or by the fortunate circumstance of being in a celebrated case. He declared always that no man at the bar came forward by sheer merit nowadays, and that all depended upon either luck or influence. Not, however, that he ever begrudged a man his success. On the contrary, he liked to see the advancement of his friends, and even though downhearted and filled with poignant regret at being compelled to part with George Macbean, yet he honestly wished him all the good fortune a true friend could wish.

Mrs Bridges, the shuffling old laundress, whose chief weakness was “a drop o’ something,” who constantly spoke of her “poor husband,” and whose tears were ever flowing, cleared away the remains of their breakfast, and the two men spent the whole morning together smoking and contemplating the future.

“I suppose they’ll put you into a gorgeous uniform and a sword when you get to Rome,” laughed Grenfell presently. “You’ll send me a photo, won’t you?” And his big face beamed with good-humour.

“Secretaries don’t wear uniforms,” was the other’s response.

“No, but you’ll soon rise to be something else,” the barrister assured him. “A fellow isn’t singled out by a foreign Government like you are unless he gets something worth having in a year or two! They’ll appreciate you more than our friend the provision-dealer has done. I shan’t forget the way the fellow spoke to me when I called upon you that morning. He couldn’t have treated a footman worse than you and me. I felt like addressing the Court for the defence.”

“Well, it’s all over now,” laughed his friend. “This evening I shall give him notice to leave his service, and I admit frankly that I shall do so with the greatest pleasure.”

“I should think so, indeed,” Billy remarked. “And don’t forget to tell him our private opinion of such persons as himself. He may be interested to know what a mere man-in-the-street thinks of a moneyed dealer in butter and bacon. By Jove! if I only had the chance I should make a few critical remarks that he would not easily forget.”

“I quite believe it!” exclaimed George merrily. “But now I’m leaving him we can afford to let bygones be bygones. I only pity the poor devil who becomes my successor.”

And both men again lapsed into a thoughtful silence, George’s mind being filled with recollections of those warm summer days of tea-drinking and tennis when he was guest of his uncle, the Reverend Basil Sinclair, at Thornby.

What, he wondered, could have induced that tall, sallow-faced foreigner, the Italian Under-Secretary for War, to offer him such a lucrative appointment? He had only met him once, for a few moments, when the Minister’s wife had introduced them in an interval of tennis on the lawn at Orton.

There was a motive in it. But what it was he could not discern.

Chapter Twenty Six.

A Millionaire’s Tactics.

Mr Morgan-Mason, the Member for South-West Norfolk, sat alone in his gorgeous gilt and white dining-room with the remains of dessert spread before him. A coarse-faced, elderly man with grey side-whiskers, a wide expanse of glossy shirt-front, and a well-cut dinner coat, he was twisting his wineglass between his fingers while a smile played about his lips. His obese figure, with shoulders slightly rounded, a bull neck, and gross, flabby features, gave one the impression that he lived for himself alone, that his life was a selfish, idle one.

His house in town and his place in the country were the typical abodes of a nouveau riche. His motors, his yacht, and his racehorses were the very best that money could command, and yet with all his display of wealth he still carried the tenets of the counting-house into his private life. He gave “fifty-guinea-a-head” dinners at the Carlton, it was true, but his entertainments were not on a large scale. He lent the aristocracy money, and allowed them to entertain him in return. He considered it an honour to be made use of by the hard-up earl or by the peeress whose debts at bridge were beyond her means. A knighthood had been offered him, but he had politely declined, letting it be distinctly known to the Prime Minister that nothing less than a peerage would be acceptable; and this had actually been half promised! He was the equal, nay, the superior, of those holders of once-exclusive titles who left their cards upon him and who shot his grouse; for, as a recent writer has declared, the god Mammon is to-day gradually drawing into its foetid embrace all the rank and beauty and nobility that once made England the glorious land she is.

He had taken a telegram from his pocket, and re-read it—a message from a woman bearing one of the noblest titles in the English peerage, asking audaciously for a loan, and inviting him up to her country-house in Durham, where an exclusive party was being entertained. He smiled with gratification, for the sovereign was among her ladyship’s guests.

He touched the bell, and in answer the butler entered. “Tell Macbean to come here,” he ordered, without looking up. “And give me a liqueur. I don’t want coffee to-night.”

The elderly, grave-faced servant served his master obsequiously, and noiselessly disappeared.

A few minutes later there came a light rap at the door and George Macbean entered.

“Just reply to this wire,” the millionaire said, handing it to his secretary. “Tell her ladyship that I’ll leave King’s Cross at eleven to-morrow, and that what she mentions will be all right. You need not mention the word loan; she’ll understand. I can’t dictate to-night, as I’m going to the club. Be here at seven in the morning, and I’ll reply to letters while I’m dressing.”

Macbean took the telegram and hesitated.

“Well? What are you waiting there for? Haven’t you had your dinner—eh?”

“Yes, I have had my dinner, Mr Morgan-Mason,” was the young man’s quick reply, his anger rising. “I wish to speak a word to you.”

“Well, what’s the matter? Work too hard? If so, you can take a month’s notice and go. Lots more like you to be got,” added the man with the fat, flabby face.

“The work is not too hard,” was Macbean’s response, speaking quite calmly. “I only wish to say that I intend leaving you, having accepted a Government appointment.”

“A Government appointment?” echoed the millionaire. “Has Balfour given you a seat in the Cabinet, or are you going to be a doorkeeper or something of that sort down at the House?”

“Neither. My future is my own affair.”

“Well, I wish you good luck in it,” sneered his employer. “I’ll see that the next secretary I get isn’t a gentleman. Airs and graces don’t suit me, my boy. I see too much of ’em in Mayfair. I prefer the people of the Mile End Road myself. I was born there, you know, and I’m proud of it.”

“Shall I send the telegram from the Strand office?” asked Macbean, disregarding the vulgarian’s remarks. “It is Sunday night, remember.”

“Send it from where you like,” was the man’s reply. And then, as the secretary turned to leave, he called him back, saying in a rather more conciliatory tone—

“You haven’t told me what kind of appointment you’ve accepted. Whatever it is, you can thank my influence for it. They know that I wouldn’t employ a man who isn’t up to the mark.”

“I thank you for your appreciation,” Macbean said, for it was the first kindly word that he had ever received from the millionaire during all the time he had been in his service.

“Oh, I don’t mean that you are any better than five hundred others in my employ,” the other returned. “I’ve got a hundred shop-managers who would serve me equally well at half the wages I pay you. I’ve all along considered that you don’t earn what you get.”

“In that case, then, I am very pleased to be able to relieve you of my services, and to take them where they will be at last appreciated.”

“Do you mean to be insolent?”

“I have no such intention,” replied Macbean, still quite cool, although his hands were trembling with suppressed anger. “The Italian Government will pay me well for my work, and will not hurl insults at me on every possible occasion and before every visitor. I have been your servant, Mr Morgan-Mason, your very humble servant, but after despatching this telegram I shall, I am glad to inform you, no longer be yours to command.”

“The Italian Government!” exclaimed the millionaire, utterly surprised. “In what department are you to be employed?”

“In the Ministry of War.”

“What!—in the office of that man we saw regarding the Abyssinian contracts?—Morini his name was, wasn’t it?”

“No. In the office of the Under-Secretary, Borselli.”

“I suppose you made it right with them when I took you with me to Rome—made good use of your ability to speak the lingo—eh?”

“I had then no intention of entering the Italian service,” was his reply. “The offer has come to me quite spontaneously.”

Morgan-Mason was silent, twisting his glass before him and thinking deeply. The name Borselli recalled something—an ugly affair that he would have fain forgotten.

“I thought you had secured an appointment in one of the English Government offices,” he said at last, with a sudden change of tactics. “Why go abroad? Why not remain with me? I’ll give you an increase of fifty pounds a year. You know my ways, and I hate strangers about me.”

“I much regret that I cannot accept your offer,” replied George. “I have already accepted the appointment, which is at a salary very considerably in advance of that you have been paying me.”

“But I’ll pay you the same as they offer. You are better off in England. How much do they intend to give you?”

“I am too fond of Italy to refuse a chance of going out there,” Macbean replied. “I spent some years in Pisa in my youth, and have always longed to return and live in the warmth and sunshine.”

A brief silence fell.

Presently, after reflection, the Member of Parliament exclaimed, in a tone more pleasant than he had ever used before—

“Let me speak candidly, Macbean. I would first ask you to forget the words I uttered a few moments ago. I am full of business, you know, and am often out of temper with everything. I was out of temper just now. Well, you want to leave me and go to Italy, while I desire you to remain. Tell me plainly what salary you will accept and continue in my service.”

“I am as perfectly frank as you are,” George replied. “No inducement you could offer would keep me in England.”

Mr Morgan-Mason bit his lip. He never expected this refusal from the clever man whom he had treated as an underling. It was his habit to purchase any service with his money, and this rebuff on the part of a mere servant filled him with chagrin—he who so easily bought the smiles of a duchess or the introduction of a marquis into the royal circle itself.

He did not intend that Macbean should enter the service of Angelo Borselli. He had suspicion—a strong suspicion—and for that reason desired to keep the pair apart. His mind was instantly active in an attempt to devise some scheme by which his own ends could be attained. But if his secretary flatly refused to remain?

“I think you are a consummate fool to your own interests,” remarked his employer. “Foreign Governments when they employ an Englishman only work him for their own ends, and throw him aside like a sucked orange.”

“English employers often do the same,” answered Macbean meaningly.

The millionaire was full of grave reflections, and in order to obtain time to form some plan, he ordered Macbean to despatch the telegram and return.

An hour later, when George entered the splendidly appointed study wherein his employer was lounging, the latter rose, lit a cigar, and turning to him in the dim light—for they were standing beyond the zone of the green-shaded writing-lamp upon the table—said—

“I wish very much, Macbean, that you would listen to reason, and refuse the appointment these Italians offer you. You know as well as I do the insecurity of Governments in Italy; how the man in power to-day may be disgraced to-morrow, and how every few years a clean sweep is made of all officials in the ministries. You have told me that yourself. Recollect the eye-opener into Italian methods we had when we saw the Minister of War regarding the contracts for Abyssinia. I wonder that you, honest man as you are, actually contemplate associating yourself with such a corrupt officialdom.” The arrogant moneyed man was clever enough to appeal to Macbean’s honour, knowing well that his words must cause him to reflect.

“I shall only be an obscure secretary—an employee. Such men have no opportunity of accepting bribes or of pilfering. Theft is only a virtue in the higher grade.”

“Well, since you’ve been out I’ve very carefully considered the whole matter. I should be extremely sorry to lose you. You have served me well, although I have shown no appreciation—I never do. When a man does his best, I am silent. But I am prepared to behave handsomely if you will remain. Your salary shall be raised to five hundred a year. That’s handsome enough for you, isn’t it?”

Macbean slowly shook his head, and declared that no monetary inducement would be availing. He intended to go to Italy at all hazards.

The millionaire stroked his whiskers, for he was nonplussed. Yet he was shrewd, and gifted with a wonderful foresight. If Macbean really intended to go to Rome, then some other means must be found by which to ingratiate himself with the man he had so long ill-treated and despised. There might come a day when Macbean would arise against him, and for that day he must certainly be prepared.

He flung himself into his big morocco arm-chair and motioned George to the seat at the writing-table, having first ascertained that the door was closed. Then, with a few preliminary words of regret that the young man preferred service abroad, he said in a low, earnest voice—confidential for the first time in his life—

“If you go to Rome it is for the purpose of improving your position—of making money. Now, I am desirous of obtaining certain information, for which I am prepared to pay very handsomely, and at the Ministry of War you can, if you go cautiously to work, obtain it.”

“You mean some military secret?” remarked Macbean, looking quickly at his master. “I certainly shall never betray my employers.”

“No, no, not at all,” protested the arrogant man before him, with a dry laugh. “It is a secret which I desire to learn—one for which I will willingly pay you ten thousand pounds in cash, if you can give me proof of the truth—but it is not a military one. You need have no fear that I am asking you to act the traitor to your employers.” The two men regarded each other fixedly. Each was suspicious of double-dealing. The millionaire was searching to discover whether the sum named was sufficiently tempting to induce his secretary to act as his spy, while the latter, scanning the large eyes of the other, endeavoured to read the motive of the mysterious offer.

“You can earn ten thousand pounds easily if you are only wary and act with careful discretion,” went on the millionaire, seeing that Macbean had become interested. “It only requires a little tact, a few judicious inquiries, and the examination of a few official documents. To the latter you will no doubt have access, and if so it will be easy enough.”

“And what is it?” asked George Macbean after a brief pause, shifting in his chair as he spoke. “What is it you desire to know?”

“The truth regarding the exact circumstances of the death of poor Sazarac.”

The other held his breath.

“I desire to avenge his death,” went on the millionaire quietly, looking straight into the face of the astonished man, “and I intend to do so. He was my friend, you know. Discover the truth, and I will willingly pay you the sum I have named—ten thousand pounds.” George Macbean sat before his employer utterly bewildered, stupefied.

Chapter Twenty Seven.

Vito is Inquisitive.

Three months had gone by.

The winter season in Florence had commenced in real earnest, and the streets of the grey old city were agog with the crowd of wealthy foreigners who migrate there for blue sky and sunshine. The Via Tornabuoni was bright with smart toilettes, the Lung Arno was crowded with handsome equipages, the Cascine was full of life at the fashionable hour of four, while Vieusseux’s and the Floreal tea-shop overflowed, and there was gay laughter and cosmopolitan chatter everywhere.

Florence had awakened from her summer siesta beneath the glare and heat, and with her streets still sun-blanched she had put on that air of irresponsibility which is always so attractive to the leisured foreigner. Florentine hostesses were already beginning to receive, and the mass of small and jealous cliques, which calls itself English society, had started their five o’clock and teacup scandals.

The Englishman who visits Florence to inspect her art treasures and to bask in the sunshine of the Lung Arno or the heights of Fiesole is entirely ignorant of its curious complex society—of the blood pride of the Florentines, or of the narrow-minded prejudices of those would-be cosmopolitan Britons, mostly with double-barrelled names, who are residents. Probably there is no circle in all the world so select and so conservative as the society of the aristocratic Florentines. The majority of the princes, marquises, or counts are on the verge of bankruptcy, be it said; nevertheless, they still retain all their pride of race, and neither man nor woman is judged by his pocket. Those huge, ponderous cinquecento palaces, with their gloomy cortiles and their closely barred windows, may have been stripped of their pictures, their sculptures, and their antique furniture long ago, yet at the receptions given in those bare skeletons of ancestral homes no one comments upon the pinch of poverty that is so painfully displayed.

Your Florentine aristocrat makes a brave show to the world and to the little English cliques around him. He has a grand carriage with his arms and coronet boldly emblazoned on every panel, he drives fine horses, he has his clothes made in London, and his wife’s dresses come from the Rue de la Paix; he gambles at the circolo, and he lounges picturesquely at Giacosa’s or Doney’s. And yet in his great palace, the doors of which are rigorously closed, he lives frugally in a few huge, barely furnished rooms, and is scarcely able to make both ends meet.

The American invasion has, however, commenced to break down even this barrier of caste, for several men of the bluest Florentine blood have, of necessity, married American wives, in order to save themselves from ruin, and have been loudly condemned for so doing.

In those bright January days all Florence was agog regarding the engagement of Count Jules Dubard with Mary Morini, daughter of the popular War Minister. By reason of her mother’s health, they had remained on at the villa all the autumn; for neither had any desire for the wild gaieties and entertaining which residence in Rome entailed upon them, and preferred the quiet life of their ancient hillside home.

Daily through the streets of Florence Mary and Dubard flashed in the Minister’s motor-brougham, hither and thither, paying calls or shopping, being greeted and congratulated on every hand. Her father’s official position had given Mary the entrée to the most exclusive set, and in Florence she was always as popular as she was in the court circle at the Quirinale. She dressed usually in cream flannel, with a large black hat and a huge ostrich boa; while Dubard, smiling and elegant, was ever at her side in the smart conveyance which rushed everywhere with loud trumpeting.

Her family, in ignorance of the tragedy of her young life, were delighted with the engagement, and on every hand had she received heartiest good wishes. For a girl to marry an Englishman or Frenchman is considered the height of chic in Italy, and Mary’s social prestige was increased a hundredfold by her prospect of becoming a French countess. The young pair became the most striking and popular figures in the best Florentine society, while the English sets all vainly struggled to get them to their houses. Madame Morini being too unwell to go out at night, Mary was usually chaperoned by the old Princess Piola, a well-known society leader; and solely in order to please her mother, Mary went to all the functions to which she was bidden.

The Minister’s wife, however, had never entertained any great affection for the English set in Florence. She had once been an English governess herself, and having known them all well through twenty years, had become thoroughly disgusted with their petty bickerings and constant scandal-mongering. Strange that the English on the Continent always divide into a quantity of small cliques. The French, the Germans, even the Scots, all join harmoniously and patriotically in a continental tour; but, as the Italians are so fond of saying, “the English is a good but strange nation.”

With the exception of the British Consul-General’s wife, who was an old friend of her mother’s, Mary visited no other English house.

“The Italian law of caste is bad enough, my dear,” her mother had said to her one day, “but the English backbiting is infinitely worse.”

And so, with the man she was engaged to marry, she was seen night after night at those huge old mediaeval palaces, often dimly lit on account of the penury of their owners, and where the refreshments frequently consisted of home-made lemonade and tarts from the pastrycook’s.

One night at a dance at the great Cusani Palace on the Lung Arno, where the old Marchioness Cusani was entertaining her friends, she found herself chatting with Vito Ricci, the deputy, who, wearing on the lapel of his coat the dark green ribbon and white cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, had bowed low over her hand and murmured his congratulations.

The great salon, with its polished floor, faded gilding, and crumbling frescoes, was of the ornate style of three centuries before, but over everything was a faded and neglected aspect. Those empty niches in the wall had once contained statues by Donatello, Niccolo Pisano, and Montorsoli, all of which had been sold and exported from Italy to America years ago; while the two large panels painted white had each contained a Raphael, long since disposed of to the National Gallery in London. And although the supper consisted of sandwiches from Doney’s, and in lieu of champagne sweet Asti at two-francs-fifty the bottle, yet the nobility of Florence far preferred gathering there to being patronised by the wealthy Americans or English.

The music was good, and Ricci invited Mary to the waltz which at that moment was just commencing. She had known her father’s secret agent ever since she had been a child; therefore, nothing loth, she gave him the favour he requested. Both were excellent dancers. Ricci went into society of necessity, in order to keep in touch with the trend of affairs, and was equally well known in Rome as in Florence, in Turin, or in Naples. His sponsor had been Morini himself, and he was one of the very few of the rank and file of the Camera who moved actually in the best sets.

“I have wanted to meet you for quite a long time, Miss Mary,” he said in Italian, after they had finished dancing and were strolling through one of the high old ante-rooms, where two or three cavalry officers were lounging with their partners. At dances in Italy a hostess is always careful to have a sprinkling of the military on account both of the brilliant uniforms and of the fact that they are all dancing men. “I suppose, however,” he added, bending to her and speaking in a low tone that could not be overheard, “I suppose that, now you are to marry Jules, any question that concerns him is debarred—eh?”

“What do you mean?” she inquired, looking at him quickly with her fine dark eyes.

“I mean that I hesitate to put a question to you lest you should be offended.”

“It all depends upon the nature of the question,” she answered, as they turned into a long, dim corridor, where they found themselves alone.

“Well,” he said, “as you are aware, I am your father’s friend, and have been so through many years. Recently there was a—well, a crisis, which was averted in a very unexpected and mysterious manner.”

“I know,” she remarked, turning rather pale. She wore turquoise blue that night, a beautiful gown of Paquin’s which suited her admirably. “My father has told me everything. You made every effort to wreck the Socialist conspiracy—and you were fortunately successful. I return you my very warmest thanks. You saved my father.”

“No; you are quite mistaken. I did not. The questions were abandoned for some mysterious motive which I am still endeavouring to discover. It is in pursuance of my inquiries that I am now approaching you. Do you follow me?”

“Perfectly.”

“As far as I can gather, your father’s enemies have only postponed their blow. It may fall at any time, therefore we must be prepared for it. Montebruno received orders in secret to postpone his attack, and there must have been a reason for this. Perhaps the time was not yet ripe—perhaps the Socialists feared a retaliation which might crush them. In any case, we must get at the truth, and thus be forearmed.”

“And how can I assist you?” she asked, knowing the bitter truth of her self-sacrifice, but determined to keep her secret to herself.

“By being frank with me.”

“Well?”

“You are to marry Jules Dubard?”

“Yes.”

“At your father’s instigation?”

She was silent, and her cheeks turned slightly paler. Their long acquaintance gave him the right to put such a question to her, yet within her heart she resented it. Why should this secret agent, this man who was an adventurer, although so useful in her father’s service, seek to learn the truth?

“My father gave his consent to our marriage,” she replied simply.

“I know that. He has already told me so. I speak plainly, and say that I am desiring to get at the truth.”

“The truth of what? I don’t understand you.”

“The truth regarding certain circumstances which are exceedingly curious. I have been for three months in active pursuit of knowledge, and in my inquiries have discovered some very strange things. Remember, I am working in the interests of your father, and anything you may say to me is in strict confidence. We have known each other for a long time, Miss Mary,” he added—“indeed, ever since you wore short frocks and used to flirt with me in the salon at San Donato. Do you recollect it?”

She laughed as a slight blush suffused her cheeks at recollection of her girlhood days before she went to school at Broadstairs. She recollected how in those youthful days she had admired Vito Ricci, the well-dressed, debonair deputy who was her father’s closest friend.

“I remember,” she admitted, laughing.

“Then let us speak in confidence,” he went on, deeply in earnest. “You were acquainted with Felice Solaro, captain in the 6th Alpine Regiment, who fell in love with you?”

She nodded, with eyes open in surprise.

“He declared his love, and you refused him. Your father, who suspected that the young captain had had the audacity to court you, was furious, and forbade you to receive him. But you saw him in secret one day to bid him farewell as he was ordered to a garrison on the French frontier. Your father being absent, you received him, at his own suggestion, in the library of the palace in Rome. While you were talking with him you heard some visitors approaching, and you rushed out, locking him in the library, pretending that your father had taken the key. He remained there in secret for over two hours, until you could escape from the callers, release him, and let him out in secret. Is that so?”

She blushed to the roots of her hair at recollection of that youthful escapade, and admitted that all he had alleged was the truth.

“And that man is now in prison, charged with having sold military secrets to France—a copy of a confidential document which was in a drawer in your father’s writing-table.”

She stood staring at him, utterly speechless.

“But that is not the charge against him,” she hastened to declare. “He is believed to have sold the plans of the Tresenta fortress.”

“That is so, but there is also the graver charge—the copying of that document which was in your father’s keeping, and one of the most secret and important concerning our army.”

“But he is innocent?” she exclaimed. “I know he is innocent, Signor Ricci. He is the victim of a woman named Nodari, at Bologna, who gave perjured evidence against him.”

“I know the whole facts. I have read the depositions given at the secret court-martial, but I have no means of judging whether he is innocent or guilty. One fact, however, I desire to learn, and it is this. Has the count ever mentioned to you the captain’s name, or has he ever admitted acquaintance with him?”

“Never to my knowledge,” was her frank answer. “Felice Solaro once declared his love for me, and therefore, in order not to arouse the count’s jealousy, I have never referred to him.”

“Naturally. But the fact is all the more curious that the allegation of Solaro’s sale of the copy of the secret document to France—the copy of that obtained from your father’s writing-table—was actually made by the count.”

“By the count?” she cried. “Then it was actually upon his evidence that poor Felice has been degraded and condemned?”

“Exactly. But the motive is utterly incomprehensible, for it would really seem as though the captain was actually guilty of the treasonable offence.”

Mary was silent as they paced down the long, deserted corridor. Then at last she turned slowly to her companion, and in a strange, hoarse voice said—

“Yes, it is incomprehensible why an innocent man should be made to suffer, unless—unless my father and the count have acted in accord to secure poor Felice’s ruin and disgrace.”

“But why?”

No words escaped her. She only shrugged her white shoulders. Yet the man at her side saw in her fine dark eyes the light of unshed tears. But even he did not suspect the truth.

Chapter Twenty Eight.

“Was Sazarac your Friend?”

It was a bright morning in Rome.

“You will recollect, Miss Mary, that when I congratulated you at Orton upon your engagement to Dubard, you declared that you had no thought of any such thing,” exclaimed George Macbean, with a smile. “I suppose I may now be permitted to repeat my congratulations?”

“If you wish,” was the girl’s mechanical reply. “And I thank you very much,” she added, her face quite serious.

They were standing together one morning in one of the smaller reception-rooms of her father’s palace. He had called on the Minister on official business, and they had met quite accidentally in the great mediaeval courtyard, where the plashing of the old marble fountain broke the quiet, playing on as it had done for nearly four hundred years; that courtyard that was so full of stirring memories of the long past ages, and the stones of which had echoed to the tramp of the armed retainers of the great prince whose ancestral home it once was.

Since his arrival in Rome two months ago fortune had certainly smiled upon George Macbean General Borselli had given him a lucrative appointment in the Ministry at a salary which enabled him to rent a comfortable little bachelor apartment in the Via Sistina. The work was very different from the drudgery from Morgan-Mason’s correspondence, and he had quickly found that his position at once gave him the entrée to the official society of the Italian capital. The Under-Secretary was kindness itself, and he soon found that his office was one of those sinecures with fat emoluments which are found more or less in every Government department.

For three weeks or so after his arrival he had no occasion to meet His Excellency the Minister, but when he one day entered Morini’s private cabinet, he took the opportunity of thanking him for the appointment. The Minister thereupon, as though suddenly recollecting their previous acquaintanceship, made a number of inquiries as to what office he was filling in the Ministry and the nature of his work, the outcome of which was that within six weeks of his arrival in the Eternal City he found himself appointed private secretary to the Minister himself.

This displeased Borselli, he thought; for when he informed him of the Minister’s order, he remained silent and his sallow face assumed an expression of distinct disapproval. The general had not expected that Morini would take the young man into his service, or he would probably have hesitated to call him from London. Nevertheless, the Under-Secretary was too clever to openly exhibit any annoyance at the chief’s decision. Indeed, he was always humble and obedient, bowing to every decree of his superior, even though in his heart he was ever plotting against him. And so George Macbean had become one of His Excellency’s private secretaries, and very soon enjoyed a good deal of the confidence of his principal.

Hitherto, however, his work lying always at the Ministry, he had never had occasion to go to the palace. From the first moment of his arrival in Rome his mind had been full of recollections of Mary. He had seen her driving on the Pincio on the bright winter afternoons; he had passed her in the Corso, and had seen her, exquisitely gowned, seated with her mother in a box at the Constanzi. But she had never once noticed him, and on that morning, when he had been compelled to call at the palace to receive instructions from his chief, who was unwell, they had come suddenly face to face for the first time.

The meeting gave them mutual satisfaction. There was no doubt upon that point. She had looked hard at him ere she recognised him, for, like all the corridors in those mediaeval palaces, it was not very light, and she would have passed him without acknowledgment had he not uttered her name.

While standing there in that painted room with the tarnished gold furniture and mosaic floor, so different from the country drawing-room at Orton, with its bright chintzes and flowers, he had briefly told her of the unexpected offer that had reached him in England, of his acceptance, and of his ultimate appointment to be one of her father’s private secretaries.

“Only fancy!” she laughed. “The world is really very small, is it not? I never thought, when we played tennis together at your uncle’s tournament at Thornby, that you would be given an office in the Ministry of War. But I remember now how well you spoke Italian, and that you told me how fond you were of Italy.”

“I owe all my good fortune to your father, Miss Morini. Believe me, it has lifted me out of a world of drudgery and insult—for, as I think I told you, I have been secretary to a Member of Parliament named Morgan-Mason.”

“Ah! of course!” she exclaimed quickly, regarding him with a curious, fixed look. “You were secretary to Mr Morgan-Mason.”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“Not personally,” she faltered, with some confusion. “I—well, I’ve heard of him. Some English friends of mine know him very well, and through them I have heard of the fellow’s pompous egotism.”

“Then you can well understand how very deeply I thank your father for his kindnesses towards me.” And then he spoke of her engagement, about which everyone in Rome was at that moment talking.

He noticed her disinclination to speak of the man whom she was to marry—that man whom he knew so well.

“The count is in Paris,” she answered briefly, when he inquired about him. “Have you not met him yet? I recollect when in England he was very anxious to meet you.”

“No. I have not seen him to congratulate him upon his good fortune,” replied George, with a touch of bitterness; “but no doubt he will soon return, and we shall come across each other.”

“He is due back in a week in order to go to the royal reception at the Quirinale on the nineteenth,” she said. “When I write to-morrow I will tell him that you are now in Rome.”

“No,” exclaimed Macbean quickly. “Don’t tell him. I like giving old friends pleasant surprises. When he returns I will call on him unexpectedly.”

His was a good excuse, and he was gratified to see that she accepted it. It would, he knew, never do for her to write and inform her lover of his presence in Rome. If she did, he certainly would not dare to return to the Eternal City. George had resolved to conceal his presence from the Frenchman and to carefully watch his movements. Therefore he induced the Minister’s daughter to make no mention of him.

He found her somewhat more wan and pale than she had been in England. She seemed preoccupied, distraite, with a touch of sadness in her deep, liquid eyes that was scarcely in keeping with the passion and ecstasy of an engagement. She was not her old self, bright, lighthearted, and careless, as she had been in those summer days in England. Something had occurred, but what it was he had no means of ascertaining.

The one thought that held him spellbound was the reflection that she was actually to marry Jules Dubard.

She was about to sacrifice herself, and yet he dare not tell her the terrible truth. He stood gazing into her great brown eyes, speechless before that calm and wondrous beauty that had for months arisen constantly before his eyes amid the whirl of London life. Yes, he loved her—he had fallen to worship at her shrine ever since those warm afternoons when they had played tennis on the level English lawns, and now this re-encounter had awakened within him all the wild passion of his yearning heart.

During those days in Rome he had heard much of her, for she was popular everywhere, a reigning beauty in the gay, exclusive circle which surrounded the royal throne, and one of the most courted of all the unmarried girls in the capital. The season was at its height, therefore she was seen everywhere, mostly in company with Dubard. If the truth were told, however, it was much against her own inclination. She was in no mood for gaiety. All the life and gaiety had been crushed from her heart, and she only attended the various functions because it was her duty towards her father to do so. Many a sleepless night she spent in prayer and in tears.

Long ago she had become nauseated by all the glare and glitter, the chatter and music of those gilded salons where smart Rome amused themselves each evening. Whenever she could, she made excuses to stay at home in the quiet and silence of her own room; but as it was part of her father’s statecraft that she should be seen and congratulated, she was compelled very often to put on her magnificent gowns with a sigh, dance when her heart was leaden, and smile even though she was bursting with grief.

Yet she rigorously kept the secret of her self-sacrifice, and none suspected that the young French élégant had compelled her to accept him as husband. Indeed, Dubard was already very popular in Rome. He was possessed of means, belonged to the most exclusive Italian club, and drove a smart phaeton and pair each afternoon, frequently with Mary at his side.

The men and women who were Dubard’s friends were among the highest in society, yet none knew the truth save Borselli and George Macbean, neither of whom dare, for their own sakes, utter one single word in denunciation.

“You told me at Orton that the count was an old friend, Mr Macbean,” exclaimed Mary, after a brief pause. She had met his gaze unflinchingly, and then lowered her eyes to the ground. She looked fresh and neat in her plain black tailor-made gown, for she was dressed ready to go out for her morning walk in the Corso.

“Yes. We met several years ago,” was Macbean’s reply.

“Where?”

“In London.”

“You must have been close friends,” she remarked, “for he has on several occasions asked whether I had heard of you.”

George smiled, for his reflections were bitter ones. “Yes,” he said, “I knew him quite well; but we drifted apart, as friends so often do.”

“Then you will, of course, be glad to meet him again.”

“For one reason, very glad. Because I want to inquire of him what has become of one who was our mutual friend, and who mysteriously disappeared—a very curious affair.”

“Was it a man?” asked Mary, suddenly interested.

“Yes—a French army officer—a General Felix Sazarac.”

“Sazarac!” she gasped, with open mouth and cheeks suddenly blanched as the name recalled to her the strange conversation between Borselli and her father. “Was Sazarac your friend?”

Chapter Twenty Nine.

Around the Throne.

Mary, accompanied by the faithful Teresa, a stout, middle-aged woman in black, who had seen fifteen years of service in the family, went out along the Corso, at that hour crowded by the Roman idlers and foreign visitors.

The bright air of the spring morning was refreshing after the dull gloom of the great old Antinori palace, and all Rome was full of life, movement, and gaiety. Carnival had passed, and the Pasqua was fast approaching, that time when the Roman season is its gayest and when the hotels are full of wealthy foreigners from the north.

The court receptions and balls had brought the Italian aristocracy from the various cities, and the ambassadors were mostly at their posts because of the weekly diplomatic receptions.

As Mary went along the Corso to an artists’ colour shop, in order to purchase some tubes for the painting which occupied her spare time, she was saluted on every hand, for she was well-known and popular everywhere. Her beauty was remarked wherever she went.

She bowed and smiled her acknowledgments, but, alas! only mechanically. She really did not recognise any of those men who raised their hats, the smart officers who drew their heels together and saluted, or the well-dressed women who nodded to her. Truth to tell, she was thinking of the man with whom she had so suddenly come face to face, the straight, athletic man who had spoken so openly and so frankly about himself when they had stood upon that green, level tennis-lawn at Orton. The recollection of him had almost faded from her memory until only half an hour ago, and now she found herself reflecting deeply, wondering whether he had really schemed to enter her father’s service, and, if so, with what motive.

He had acknowledged himself to be a friend of Dubard, the man she held in such suspicion and distrust, and yet there was something so frank and honest in his manner that it held her mystified. As she walked along that narrow, crowded thoroughfare in the heart of Rome, memories of those idle summer days in England arose vividly before her, of the rural tennis tournament at Thornby, of the village flower-show held in the old-world rectory garden, and of George Macbean’s visit to Orton.

Teresa spoke to her, but she heeded not. Her mind was filled with thoughts of the pleasant past when her life was free and she was unfettered. Now, however, that compact she had made to secure her father’s freedom had crushed all light and hope from her young heart, so that day by day, as her marriage approached, she became more inert and melancholy.

Her delicacy, grace, and simplicity were astonishing when one viewed that irresponsible and artificial world of modern chic in which she lived. Her character, indeed, resolved itself into the very elements of womanhood. She was beautiful, modest, and tender, so perfectly unsophisticated, so delicately refined that she was peerless among all others in that vain, silly, out-dressing set, where religion was only the cant of the popular confessor and the scandal of a promenade through Saint Peter’s or San Giovanni, the brilliant glittering crowd who formed the court circle of modern Italy around King Umberto’s throne.

She had sprung up into beauty in that far-off modest school that faced the grey English Channel at Broadstairs, and on making her bow before her sovereign she had instantly created a sensation and a vogue for herself that still continued, one which, was fostered by the Minister and his wife, although at heart she hated all the hollow shams and scandalous gossip. True, she had had her little flirtations the same as other girls, yet she had never caught from society one imitated or artificial grace. She preferred the society of her father or her mother to that of girl friends; for most of the latter of her own world she found giddy and empty-headed, generally boasting of conquests they had made among men, and ridiculing them as fools.

She tolerated society only under sheer compulsion. Through these three wild years of whirling excitement she had fortunately retained her woman’s heart, for it was unalterable and inalienable, as part of her being. And it was because of that she had now sacrificed herself to become the wife of Jules Dubard.

Oh, the tragedy of it all! No single person was there in whom to confide, or of whom to seek advice. The bitter truth was forced upon her more and more each day. The compact with the man whose artificiality and mannerisms she held in such abhorrence she was bound to keep, for did she not hold her beloved father’s future in her hands?

Of a sudden, when she was half-way up the Corso towards the Porta del Popolo, she heard the musical sounds of harness bells as a fine landau and pair swept up behind her.

Every man’s head was uncovered and every woman bowed, for there flashed by Umberto the Good and his Queen Margherita, both worshipped by the people, and on every hand there rose the cry, “Viva il Re! Viva la Regina!”

Mary bowed with the rest, and Her Majesty, quick to notice her, gave her a nod of recognition and gracious smile; for, as the world of Rome knew quite well, she was one of those behind the throne, a personal friend of the queen, who was never tired of admiring the wondrous beauty of the Minister’s daughter.

The royal pair passed on at a gallop up the Corso, and Mary sighed to herself as the carriage disappeared. It recalled to her that she was compelled to attend the state ball at the Quirinale that night, much as she hated all those glittering official functions. Her dress, a marvellous creation in yellow, had arrived from Paris the day before; but when Teresa had taken it from its long box and shaken out the magnificent skirt, she had scarcely glanced at it. She wore those gorgeous gowns which were so admired at court only because it gratified her father. Personally, she delighted in a short, tailor-made skirt and a blouse like those she could wear at Orton. The vagaries of the mode never interested her in the least. Paquin had her model, and made her dresses as he liked. She simply wore them, annoyed at those long and difficult trains he gave her—that was all.

The gay world around the throne believed that she studied the fashions and wore those costly gowns because she delighted in them. But such was not a fact. Her tastes were of the simplest, and her ideal always was a life in the rural quiet of Orton Court, with an occasional shopping visit to London as a dissipation. The very atmosphere of Rome, with its false appearances, its bartering of a girl’s bright youth, loveliness, and purity for titles, its gambling and its drug habits, stifled her. She loathed it all, and longed to enjoy life’s good gifts in rural England. Yet, alas! such an ideal was to her but a dream. It was her fate to be drawn into that maelstrom where each man and woman must be seen, must be known, and must be notorious in some way or other, no matter how.

And because she was born in the official world, she was bound, for her father’s sake, to act her part in it.

Through all that day she reflected upon the words which the young Englishman had uttered regarding Sazarac—that unusual name she had once overheard spoken, and which she recollected so well. She remarked how her father had distinctly betrayed fear at mention of it, and therefore the reason had ever since been a puzzling mystery to her.

For months she had wondered at what Borselli meant when he had threatened her father. The latter had reproached him of his intention to betray him, whereupon the Under-Secretary had said—

“I am in earnest. You act as I have suggested—or you take the consequences!”

That in itself showed plainly that the Sicilian still held power over her father on account of what had been mentioned between them as “the Sazarac affair.”

After luncheon she casually mentioned to her father her meeting with George Macbean, whereupon he said—

“Oh, I quite thought I had told you of his appointment. I wanted an English secretary, and he was the very man to fill the post. You recollect that he visited us once or twice at Orton, but I had previously met him when he came to interpret for his employer Morgan-Mason regarding an army contract for Abyssinia.”

“Did you offer him the appointment?” she asked.

“No; Angelo did. He apparently knew of him.”

His Excellency’s reply surprised Mary. Why, she wondered, had her father’s enemy appointed the young Englishman to a post in order to transfer him to her father’s cabinet as private secretary? She was suspicious of Borselli, and discerned in this some hidden motive.

And yet was it not more than strange that the young Englishman was Dubard’s friend, while Dubard himself was in the secrets of Angelo Borselli! The more she pondered over the problem the more bewildering did it become.

At midnight she alighted with her mother from the brougham in the great courtyard of the Quirinale, and gathering up her train, passed through the long flower-decked corridors, up the great staircase of marble and porphyry, where stood the tall, statuesque guards, and on into the magnificent Hall of the Ambassadors, where the guests at the court ball were assembling.

As she let down her train and entered the magnificent salon with its gilt ceiling and myriad electric lights her appearance caused a murmur of approbation as every eye was turned upon her. The assembly was perhaps the most brilliant of any that could be gathered in any European capital. The men were in uniforms of every colour, with the crosses and ribbons of the various orders of chivalry. The ambassadors and their staffs were all there, from the Chinese representatives in their national dress to the cunning old gentleman from St. Petersburg in his white uniform tunic with the blue ribbon of St. Andrew at his throat. Lord Elton, the British Ambassador, a dark-bearded, elderly man, wearing the star of Knight Commander of the Bath, came forward to greet the War Minister’s wife and daughter, and there came up also to salute the ambassador Morini himself in his gorgeous uniform with the cerise and white ribbon of the Order of the Crown of Italy and the green and white cross of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, as well as a number of minor foreign orders across his breast.

In uniform Camillo Morini always looked his best, tall, refined, distinguished, a man who would be marked out anywhere as a leader among men. He was pale and haggard, however, having risen from his bed to come there and be seen because it was policy—always policy.

Around on every side were high Italian officers in their gala uniform with golden epaulettes, women dressed exquisitely, and aged diplomatists and politicians bent beneath the weight of their gold-laced coats and many decorations. The room was a bewildering blaze of colour, diamonds gleaming in the tiaras of the women and in the crosses of the men, while on every hand was the loud, excited chatter of the gay, laughing crowd bidden there by royal command.

Lord Elton was chatting in English with Mary and her mother, explaining that only yesterday he had returned from London, where he had been on leave, when of a sudden three loud, distinct knocks were heard, and in an instant there was silence. Then, a moment later, at the farther end of the apartment two long white doors were thrown open by the royal flunkeys bearing white wands in their hands, and through them flowed the crowd into the magnificent ballroom, one of the finest both in proportions and in decoration of any palace in the world. And here and in the suite of huge gilded reception-rooms beyond the gay court of Italy commenced its revels as the splendid orchestra in the balcony struck up the first dance upon the programme.

From the ballroom there opened out through the open doors a vista of magnificent salons unequalled in grandeur even in that city of ancient palaces, and the elderly folk who did not care for dancing strolled away, greeting their friends at every step, and forming little groups for gossip.

Mary, who had quickly become separated from her mother, found herself, almost before she was aware of it, in the arms of her friend Captain Fred Houghton, the British naval attaché, dancing over the magnificent floor and receiving his compliments, while in a corner of the room, apart from the others, stood Angelo Borselli in his general’s uniform, watching her with a strange smile upon his thin lips.

And all around was in progress that drama of intrigue, of statecraft and duplicity, of diplomacy, of unscrupulous scheming for office and power which is inseparable from the vicinity of every European throne.

In that gold and white room, while the orchestra played waltz-music, the prosperity of the gallant Italian nation often trembled in the balance, for those polished floors formed the stage whereon some of the strangest of modern dramas were enacted.

Chapter Thirty.

The Path of the Tempter.

An hour had passed, and Mary, against her inclination, had danced with various partners, and had heard around her comments regarding her personal beauty and her dress such as always reached her ears on such occasions. Everyone courted and flattered her, for in that gay court circle she was one of its reigning queens. Yet the hot air stifled her; the mingled perfumes of flowers and chiffons nauseated her. She hated it all, and was longing to get away back to the solitude of her own room, where, after old Teresa had brushed her hair, she might sit in her big easy-chair and think.

Blasé of life before her time, she was disappointed, world-weary, and heart-broken, although as yet only in her early womanhood. She had been dancing with the young Prince de Sarsina, a well-known figure in Roman society, and he had led her to a seat beside the old Duchess de Rovigor, when, in the lull of the music, those mysterious knocks were again repeated, and at the farther end of the ballroom there stood the black-habited royal chamberlain.

There was silence at once. Then the royal official announced in Italian in a loud, ringing voice—

“His Majesty the King!”

And at the same moment a pair of long gilt and blue doors were flung open, and into the room there advanced the sovereign, a well-set-up, pleasant-faced figure with white moustache, before whom all bowed low three times in obeisance as he strode with regal gait into the centre of the enormous ballroom. In his splendid uniform outrivalling all, and wearing the grand crosses of the Crown of Italy, Maurice and Lazarus, and Savoy orders of which he was master, his figure presented a fitting centre to that brilliant assembly; and soon, when the obeisances were made and he had saluted in return, he moved away in conversation with Morini, who, as all were aware, was one of his most intimate friends.

Then, when the queen, wearing her wonderful pearls, entered with the same ceremony, together with the Crown Prince and Princess of Naples, the orchestra struck up again and the revelry continued notwithstanding the presence of the sovereigns, who mixed freely with their guests and laughed and talked with them.

Presently, as Mary on the arm of a partner was passing near to where Her Majesty was sitting upon the raised daïs at the end of the room, the queen suddenly beckoned to her, whereupon she left the man who was her escort, curtseyed as etiquette demanded, and approached the royal presence.

“I only heard the news the day before yesterday on our return from Berlin,” exclaimed Her Majesty in English, with a kindly smile as the girl came up to her. “But of course your engagement scarcely comes as a surprise. Let me congratulate you. You must present the count to me at the first opportunity. Is he now in Rome?”

“No, Madame,” was the girl’s blushing reply. “But I thank your Majesty for your kind thought of me.”

“I wish you every happiness, my dear,” declared the queen, for Mary was an especial favourite with her. “Perhaps I may be able to attend your wedding. When will it be?”

“In June, Madame.”

“Very well. Give me good notice of the date, and I’ll see if I can come.” And then she dismissed the Minister’s daughter by turning to speak with one of her ladies-in-waiting who had returned from executing some commission upon which her royal mistress had sent her.

What irony, thought the girl, as she curtseyed and left the royal the trap into which she had fallen!

Through those high-roofed, magnificent chambers, with their wonderful friezes, priceless paintings, and gilt furniture, she wandered on, acknowledging greetings on every hand, yet only mechanically, for her thoughts were far away from that scene of royal revelry. The atmosphere held her asphyxiated, the music jarred upon her ears, and the gossip she heard on every side was for her devoid of all interest.

One face alone arose before her amid that glittering throng, the face of the Englishman she had met so unexpectedly that morning—George Macbean.

And why? She asked herself that question, and yet to it could give no direct response. His frank honesty of countenance and his muscular English form attracted her, but when the suggestion crossed her mind that she loved him, she laughed such an idea to scorn. They were comparative strangers, and she prided herself on being one who had never fallen into the error of affection at first sight as so many other girls did. Her character, it was true, was too well balanced for that.

Yet the truth remained that all her thoughts that day had been of him.

Both the Baron Riboulet, the French Ambassador, and old Prince Demidoff had grasped her hand and paid their compliments, while the princess managed to whisper in French, “I never saw you looking so well as to-night, my dear. That gown suits you admirably, and is by far the most striking here. One cannot wonder at Count Dubard’s choice. He has always been known in Paris as a connoisseur of beauty, you know,” and Her Excellency the Princess showed her yellow teeth in a broad grin at what she meant as humour.

Wherever Mary went, half a dozen of the younger men followed in her train like bees about their queen. She laughed with them, made humorous remarks, and chatted to them with that air of bright, irresponsible gaiety by which she so cleverly concealed the heavy burden of grief and disappointment that filled her heart. In Roman society the younger men vied with each other to become friends of Mary Morini, hence at such functions as these they liked to be seen in her company, laughing or dancing with her.

The young Duke di Forano, who had recently returned from Paris, where he had acted as first secretary of the Italian Embassy, had taken her in to supper in the huge winter garden where the tiny tables were set beneath the palms, and they had been waited upon by the royal servants. In the dim light of the Chinese lanterns the duke, an old friend, had taken her hand in his; but she had withdrawn it in indignation, saying—

“You have no right to do that, now that I am engaged.”

“Ah yes! of course,” he exclaimed, with a word of apology, at once interested. “I heard something about it in Paris, but quite forgot. Jules Dubard is the lucky fellow—isn’t he?”

She nodded.

And as she looked into his dark, well-cut features in the half-light she fancied she discerned a curious look, half of pity and half of surprise.

“I hope you’ll be happy,” he remarked in a hard voice. “I always thought you would marry Solaro—poor devil! Do you remember him?”

“Remember!” she echoed. “Yes; I recollect everything. You may well say ‘poor devil.’ He has been convicted of being a traitor—of selling army secrets to France.”

“I know—I know,” answered her companion quickly. “We had all the papers concerning the charges through the Embassy, and I am aware of all the facts. My own idea is that he’s innocent, yet how can it be proved? He was betrayed by some heartless woman in Bologna, it seems. She made all sorts of charges against him.”

“She lied!” cried Mary quickly. “He is innocent. I know he is, and some day I hope to be able to prove it.”

“Ah, I wish I could help you!” was his fervent declaration. “He was my friend, you know. Perhaps the real truth may be known some day, but until then we can only wait, and he must bear his unjust punishment.”

“But it is a crying scandal that he should have been degraded when he is innocent!” declared the daughter of the Minister of War.

“Your father, no doubt, ordered the most searching inquiry. It is strange that, if he is really innocent, his innocence has not been proved.”

“You are quite right,” she said. “That very fact is always puzzling me.”

“There may be some reason why he has been consigned to prison,” remarked the diplomatist, thoughtfully twisting his champagne-glass by the stem, “some reason of State, of which we are ignorant.”

“But my father would never willingly be party to such an injustice.”

“Probably not; but what seems possible is that Solaro is held in prison by some power greater than your father’s—the power of your father’s enemies.”

She thought deeply over those strange words of his. It almost seemed as though he were actually in possession of the truth, and yet feared to reveal it to her!

Presently they rose again, and returned to where the cotillon had commenced. She did not take part in it, because her heart was too full for such frivolities. The young diplomatist had left her at a seat, when almost immediately her father’s enemy, Angelo Borselli, approached, and bowed low over her hand.

She knew well how he had endeavoured to ruin and disgrace her father, and how he intended to hold the office of Minister himself; yet, owing to the instructions His Excellency had given her, she treated him with that clever diplomacy which is innate in woman. In common with her father, she never allowed him to discern that she entertained the slightest antipathy towards him, and treated him with calm dignity as she had always done.